Egypt’s Coup … and Ours

Here is what Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution had to say about Egypt’s coup in a New York Times op-ed:

"Now supporters of the Brotherhood will ask, with good reason, whether democracy still has anything to offer them."

As much as I loathe the Muslim Brotherhood and the whole Islamist enterprise, it is difficult to imagine any other response among Islamists than this: Our votes don’t count.

They were voted into office; many Egyptians and the army didn’t like the results, so the vote was overthrown.

With some important differences — and not all of them to the credit of the United States — the Supreme Court of the United States, colluding judges and the Democratic Party of California did the same thing to the voters of California.

First, in March 2000, the voters of California, by the lopsided percentile margin of 61-38, voted to enact a statute that restricted marriage to one man and one woman. Eight years later, in May 2008, the California Supreme Court struck it down on the grounds that it violated the state constitution.

Having had their vote overturned by the California Supreme Court because Proposition 22 allegedly violated the California Constitution, the citizens of California later that year voted to amend the California Constitution. It would include these 14 words:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Known as Proposition 8, it, too, passed in liberal California — by a margin of 52-47.

Immediately challenged by pro-same-sex marriage groups, the California Supreme Court actually upheld the vote. Even a California Supreme Court had no choice but to vote that way since, in effect, it was being asked to vote on whether the California Constitution was constitutional in California.

But the left in America knows that all it needs to do in order to overturn a vote it opposes is to find a left-wing judge or court.

So, the left went to a federal court and found the perfect judge, a gay leftist, former U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker. On August 4, 2010, Walker overturned Proposition 8, asserting, among other personal opinions, that the amendment to the California Constitution "violated the Equal Protection Clause [of the U.S. Constitution] because there is no rational basis for limiting the designation of ‘marriage’ to opposite-sex couples." (Italics added.)

All of Western civilization for all its history had been irrational in defining marriage as a man-woman institution. So believed one man, and he used that view to overturn — for a second time in eight years — the vote of a substantial majority of Californians.

Walker’s ruling was, of course, upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most left-wing circuit court in the country. Like Walker and most other leftwing justices, the Ninth Circuit rules according their ideology, not according to the law and certainly not according to the will of voters.

The left uses left-wing judges and courts to achieve its ends. They uphold votes that support the left, and overturn those that don’t.

But it gets worse.

The left-wing governor and attorney general of California chose not to defend Proposition 8 before the Supreme Court, though it was their legal duty to do so. "Social justice" is the supreme left-wing value; honor and integrity are redefined to mean that which promotes social justice, as the left defines the term.

Consequently, there was no one with legal standing to defend the vote of a substantial majority of Californians before the Supreme Court. And so, the Supreme Court ruled that since no one but the State of California had the legal standing to defend the voters of California, neither the Supreme Court nor the Ninth District Court of Appeals could rule on Judge Walker’s decision. And so one leftist judge’s ruling was allowed to remain in force.

As a result, another vote was overturned and the most important social institution was radically redefined. It was all done by a left-wing judge, a left-wing governor of California and four left-wing justices plus one swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In America we don’t need the army to overthrow elections. We have left-wing judges to do that.

Dennis Prager’s latest book, "Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph," was published April 24 by HarperCollins. He is a nationally syndicated radio show host and creator of PragerUniversity.Com.

There can never be a level playing field when conservatives try to block what liberals want to do, because the left does not follow the same core values that bind those on the right. The relativistic world view does not believe in right and wrong. That’s what is so exasperating about how things get turned upside down by the liberal judges, congressmen, journalists, lawyers, bureaucrats, etc. Even when our president is blocked by a branch of congress, he can find a way to do what he wants.

Wheels55

I wonder how many times George W., George H.W. and even Clinton used Executive powers and such to go around congress and decided to not follow laws passed.

Wheels55

It seems to be state-of-the-art for elected officials, from judges to our President, choosing what laws to enforce and how to bend them. I know this isn’t new, just so much of it going on. So, either we elect lousy law makers, elect lousy law enforcers or both. I say both.

Bloviating Ignoramus

Judge Walker is correct. There is no rational basis for limiting marriage in a civil sense to heterosexual couples. Marriage in a religious sense is another story. Religions are free to discriminate within the context of the religion. Maybe in your Fascist Fantasyland there is no distinction. But here in the Land Of The Free Home Of The Brave you cannot vote to deny anyone their civil rights. What part of “certain unalienable rights, among them life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” do you not undestand?

Brian Fr Langley

Good article. The U.S. is of course not a democracy and never was. It’s could more accurately be described as a constitutional republic. That is, not a nation of one man one vote, but a nation of law (s). Laws are not created in a vacuum. In the U.S. the law was based on the ancient and time tested laws of the Judeo-Christian ethic. The fount of which was (and is) the family. And this is where the war for our culture is being lost. Yes economics is important, but all fails when the family fails. Modern leftist’s following Marxist doctrine actively promote sexual promiscuity, abortion on demand, and gay marriage, all designed to create the vast Government dependencies we now see in the form of single parent families. Today in the black community alone some 73% of all children are born to single mothers. This MEANS 3 out of 4 children are ACTUALLY being ABANDONED by their fathers. In the history of humanity never have so many children faced abandonment by their fathers in such numbers. Conservatives by and large have focused primarily on the fiscal war with the lefties, all but surrendering the field in the social war. But once the traditional family, it’s loyalties, and their bourgeois values are out of the way, socialist fiscal values become easy to impose.

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